The second season of HBO's Girls, currently airing Sunday nights, has consistently delivered on a few things: a naked Lena Dunham, a totally clothed Allison Williams, minimalist plots about the struggles of twentysomethings, and scene-stealing performances by Alex Karpovsky, who plays 33-year-old coffee shop manager Ray Ploshansky. Karpovsky's having a bit of a moment himself lately. Like Dunham, he's also a director and writer, and this week marks the release of two of his films, a dark comedy, Red Flag, and a psycho-sexual thriller, Rubberneck (both available via video on-demand and iTunes now). We recently talked to Karpovsky over the phone while he was in his Brooklyn home about the appeal of Girls, neuroses, the Coen brothers, and the necessity personal boundaries when riding the subway.

ESQUIRE.COM: In the second season of Girls, Ray's got a girlfriend in Shoshanna, he's having regular sex, but he seems very riddled with self-doubt. Is he destined to be unhappy?

ALEX KARPOVSKY: I wouldn't be so fatalistic about it. He's learning about himself. Putting himself in these positions where he's normally not that comfortable. A relationship, throwing the L-bomb out there, I think will give him a lot of possibility for growth. In the last episode — episode six, where he and Adam go to Staten Island — Adam injects a lot of perspective that might be difficult for Ray to swallow. He might deny it, specifically Adam's comments about the type of relationship he's having with Shoshanna, but ultimately, he can't deny it. He's forced to look it in the eye and negotiate with it. The negotiation process might go through some self-loathing and self-doubt and, in the very last episode, in the form of tears, but it could lead to some sort of transition. And maybe even a paradigm shift to make him a happier person.

AK: Indeed, indeed. Especially if it's something you don't do very often and probably haven't done in a long time.

ESQ:That's actually one of the more heartbreaking scenes of the season, where he and Shoshanna have a blowout on the subway platform. What do you remember about shooting that scene?

AK: Jesse Peretz directed that episode, and he's a real phenomenal director. A real actor's director. All the focus, all the time and attention, is directed toward us, the actors. He likes to shoot really long takes, and that allows us to really... There's something inside the energy in the scene when you yell "cut," and you have to resuscitate yourself to some extent to do a new take. When you stand in the same pocket for 8, 9, 10, 11 minutes, you can really loosen up and try different expressions and emotions, variations of rhythms and everything. We had a lot of that in that scene. We have incredibly talented editors that were able to make it into something quite moving. But: You have to also negotiate with subways, because we couldn't shut down the subway system. And they come a lot on the L train in New York. There was no lighting in that scene, if I remember correctly. And we had a limited number of people on the platform. In terms of atmosphere and intimacy, it felt like an independent film that I'm used to. From an acting point of view, that also loosened me up and allowed me to kind of... to be free.

ESQ: Have you ever had one of those subway blowouts in your own life?

AK: I try to preserve whatever balance society has between public and personal life. I never try to eat on the subway. I never try to listen to loud music on the subway.

ESQ: Manners.

AK: Yeah, manners. In New York City, the confines of personal space are very important. So to have something so personal revealed in such a public way was interesting to do.

ESQ: The show is a different type of comedy. What's funny about it to you?

AK: What I like in comedies are really two things: stories that are character-driven and stories that are rooted in authenticity. Those are two major focuses of the show. We have really well-rounded, flawed, engaging characters, in my opinion. With a lot of perverse anxieties. We're also grounding all of it — not just the story lines, but the locations, the arcs — in authenticity. That's where I feel a lot of funny things come from. Why? Because I can relate to them.

ESQ: There could be a magazine devoted to just reactions to Girls. You guys can start it.

AK: There you go. That's not a bad idea. I'll pitch it to HBO tomorrow. But I don't know. If I had to venture a guess, I feel like the show is refreshing to people. It's something we've been exploring for a few years now in the film scene, but because of the way television works in America and the corporate powers that control it, we haven't seen it too much in the TV space. So we're doing something new simply by putting up a mirror to what's around us every day. We're not the first people to do it, but on top of that, we have HBO, a great platform for it, Lena's incredibly interesting voice, a lot of great characters. Sex and the City,Friends, shows that our show sometimes is compared to — they're completely different. Friends had a laugh track. Sex and the City was the idealized notion. But this is more of a reflection of what women are. What living in Williamsburg or Greenpoint is today. Because of that, I think a lot of people relate to it directly, or it's an anthropological thing. It's like going to the zoo and seeing the lion cage and being intrigued and enticed by this different reality. Maybe a 65-year-old couple in Wyoming are watching the show because we are portraying an accurate and engaging and sexy depiction of what's going on across the country. We're not trying to paint an airbrushed picture of what one might aspire to become like Beverly Hills 90210 or Sex and the City. At least in New York.

AK: I did, I did. But I probably wouldn't if there was something that felt closer to a documentary and reflected the high school that I grew up with. That's why I ended up watching shows like My So-Called Life. Even Degrassi Junior High I liked more. It just felt like the characters were flawed, and I like that more.

ESQ: In your film Red Flag, you play a filmmaker called Alex Karpovsky. How much of you is in this character?

AK: A lot of his personality and character traits are kinda close to me. The plot and the journey he goes on are fictionalized. I think I tried to heighten my own fears and neuroses and insecurities and delusional dreams for comedic effect. Basically, make a caricature of myself. Not too different from what I suspect Larry David does with Curb, what Louie does on his show, what Woody Allen certainly did in his early movies. That makes me laugh. That being said, I've never been followed by an ardent groupie. That never happened to me before. I've never been engaged and had that engagement unravel because I'm a commitment-phobe. That's never happened. But the underlying fear in Red Flag is the struggle with mortality from which other fears reverberate. I definitely feel that. My day-to-day local issues are rooted in an underlying fear of death.

ESQ: Do indie filmmakers ever find groupies coming after them?

AK: Not when they look like me! Maybe others do.

ESQ: What's fun to watch in Red Flag is how Alex is extremely confident giving lectures on his film, while at the same time, behind the scenes, his life is totally falling apart.

AK: No one's brought that up before. I'm glad you did. Me and my editor would laugh about that all the time. It's like a very little secure cocoon that he can go into. It's not real. He's playing this public persona, but once he has to deal with reality, the wheels come off very quickly.

ESQ: You're slated to be in the Coen brothers' next film, Inside Llewyn Davis. What's your character Marty Green like?

AK:Marty Green is a square. Most of the movie takes place in the downtown New York City folk-music scene. It's full of musicians and bohemia and marijuana, and this guy is not a part of it. He's on the outside looking in. He's curious about what's going on, but he's an academic from Columbia University. Not invited to the party.

ESQ: So for a filmmaker, is being on a Coen brothers set a wet dream?

AK: Yes. Yes, I walked back to my trailer at the end of the shoot absolutely drenched.